Mr Putin's Netflix list being the possible exception, celebrating victory has never been more out of fashion in cinema. After one too many Watergates, pre-emptive strikes and extraordinary renditions, "the good fight" is pure speechwriter's filler nowadays. The current brigade of dark knights and superheroes who talk like life coaches aren't going to lead us boldly to the gates of glory; they like their victories tattered and pyrrhic. When even gameshow hosts behave like Guantánamo interrogators, cynicism has won the day.

1) It's impressive to see Clint bucking the odds and getting more leftwing as he ages. Digging in on Iwo Jima's black beachheads, his Flags of Our Fathers is the patriotic war movie through a negative filter: putting the political reality behind the famous, triumphant flag-raising photograph into perspective (6mins 44secs).

2) "Think the Welsh can't do better than that?""They've got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, for sure." Lung power is the ammo that never runs out, for either side, at Rourke's Drift in Zulu.

3) Your teacher turns out to be the majordomo of a televised killing game, your peers want to murder you, and the best you can probably hope for is to graduate as a corpse with great cheekbones: victory as satire on atavistic modern society in Battle Royale.

5) Sometimes, though, you gotta have the real deal. Rocky-land: where Eye of the Tiger is always playing, packs of kids run after you down the street (without criminal intent), and irony is definitely not in the Queensbury rules. I wept when I watched this clip.

We ended up with a gigantic booty haul after last week's special on thieves, so a sly wink to everyone in on that. These were our scene-stealers:

1) Hilariously nudge-nudge inserts of ejaculatory fireworks in the climactic kissing scene in To Catch a Thief - surely someone must have re-edited this?

2) The spray-on catsuit look - rocked here by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Maggie Cheung - has become almost as much of a staple for burglars as stripey prison outfit, eyemask and a big bag marked "swag".

3) Clive Owen was a couple of notches too disdainful to play Bond - he's far better placed on the criminal side of the equation, as in Spike Lee's Inside Man.